paris part 1

i decided i should probably start posting about tanner and i's recent trip to paris, since you know, it was a pretty great trip and i'm feeling sad because my sister kristen just moved from paris. her and will's next stop is to afghanistan, so its pretty safe to say we wont be visiting them there!

FRIDAY: day one

we had a chill flight over and arrived on a friday afternoon. after tanner and i arrived at kristen and will's home, we walked to a bakery to get some bread. of course thats the first thing to do when arriving in paris, right? we rode bikes to will's office then we continued on to ride bikes to the eiffel tower where we walked around, got gelato, and hung out for a while. that evening we went out to dinner and went grocery shopping... and kristen may or may not have caught me falling asleep while standing up in the grocery line. i'm sure that was attractive. needless to say, we called it a night and went home to pass out from jet lag. don't mind the poor quality photos... they were taken on tanner's phone.

SATURDAY: day two

kristen and i took an enjoyable scooter ride along the seine to a huge flea market when we spent a few hours walking around, and picked up some cute shoes, bags, and kristen got an awesome antique french newspaper. mean while tanner and will biked around the city, did a food tour at bon marcher and had the first of many cheese plates to come.

after we were all done, we all met up at the musee d'orsay.

 and had some amazing sugar waffles at the cafe.

then we continued walking around the city...

and of course stopped by a bakery and all shared a baguette.  

then we went up to rue moufftard, walked past the pantheon, had some enormous crapes for dinner, and ended our night with an incredibly delicious dessert at haagen daaz.

EASTER SUNDAY: day three

i don't really have any pictures of today besides one i took on tanner's phone. we went to sacrament meeting at kristen's ward, then tanner and i decided to be rebellious and skip the rest of church to go walk around. i was wearing some new heels i got from the flea market the day before (not knowing i was going to be walking around the city...) and needless to say i had some wonderful blisters on both my feet (and since tanner and will were into watching super gross videos online, they were more than willing, and were the ones who offered, to pop my blisters for me the next day. it was quite the experience having doctor tanner and doctor will help me out). anyways, we hung out between notre dame and the seine (a couple blocks away from church) for a while and enjoyed the beautiful cherry blossoms. then we decided to go get crepes from a place we've been to a few times... and they weren't open yet. so then we decided to go get lenny kravitz endorsed falafel... and they were closed. so after a long time of walking around with luck not on our side... we went back to church to meet k&w.  for dinner we had 2 sets of missionaries over, and after they left and we cleaned up, we went on a night walk around the park which was very pleasant.

MONDAY: day four

will had the day off so we decided to take advantage of it. we drove to giverny to see monet's gardens, and even though it was early in the season it was still definitely worth the trip. 

Wikipedia tells us: "Claude Monet noticed the village of Giverny while looking out of a train window. He made up his mind to move there and rented a house and the area surrounding it. In 1890 he had enough money to buy the house and land outright and set out to create the magnificent gardens he wanted to paint. Some of his most famous paintings were of his garden in Giverny...Monet lived in the house with its famous pink crushed brick façade from 1883 until his death in 1926. He and many members of his family are interred in the village cemetery." (thanks k :)

after giverny we drove to provins, a unesco world heritage site for its medieval charm.  it was an incredibly cute village/city that people still live in.

we watched a very memorable show that i know we'll remember for a long, long time. it was quite the production, and from the costumes below i'm sure you understand part of the entertainment we got to experience :). 

 a very cool church within the city walls.

and this is how we ended our night, which is how most of our evenings looked.

TUESDAY: day five

tuesday was a weird day. we knew we had a limited amount of time because tanner and i were leaving that late afternoon to fly to barcelona. we struck out going to the orangerie, it started pouring rain, we kept forgetting macaroon shops we were going to so we did a lot of backtracking, and the falafel place tanner wanted to go to was closed. bummer. 

tanner and kristen recreating our favorite moments from the play from provins.

 we decided to do a vanilla macaroon taste test. of course we couldn't just get vanilla, so i think tanner and i spent like $50 on macaroons that day... whoops. i didn't take a picture of the last place we went, michael cluizel, cause of the pouring rain going on. we all had different favorites, mine being laduree.

 after we struck out at our falafel place we made ourself feel better by getting a japanese style crape, which is why tanner and i are doing our japanese pose.

after this we went back to kristen's home to rest our legs after all our walking. we had our taste test, tanner and i packed up, then headed to the airport to go to barcelona. 


i dont have any pictures that evening from barcelona. tanner and i are super laid back in our traveling... like, we didn't really know how to get to our hotel from the airport, so we just got on a train and went for it. luckily tanner's iphone was working and he put in the address so we got off at a spot that looked walking distance away and it all worked out. we stayed on las ramblas, which is a super popular street with restaurants and great shopping. after dropping off our stuff we decided to go get some food, and luckily the hotel staff were able to recommend a great place so we went out at about 10pm to a packed restaurant for a delicious array of tapas.


a barcelona post is coming up!